Biswas Subhadip, Mukherjee Biswaroop, Chakrabarti Buddhapriya
Department of Physics, University of Sheffield, Hicks Building, Hounsfield Road, Sheffield, S3 7RH, UK.
Soft Matter. 2022 Nov 2;18(42):8117-8123. doi: 10.1039/d2sm01101h.
We study the thermodynamics of binary mixtures with the volume fraction of the minority component less than the amount required to form a flat interface and show that the surface tension dominated equilibrium phase of the mixture forms a single macroscopic droplet. Elastic interactions in gel-polymer mixtures stabilize a phase with multiple droplets. Using a mean-field free energy we compute the droplet size as a function of the interfacial tension, Flory parameter, and elastic moduli of the gel. Our results illustrate the role of elastic interactions in dictating the phase behavior of biopolymers undergoing liquid-liquid phase separation.
我们研究了少数组分的体积分数小于形成平坦界面所需量的二元混合物的热力学，并表明混合物中表面张力主导的平衡相形成单个宏观液滴。凝胶 - 聚合物混合物中的弹性相互作用使具有多个液滴的相稳定。使用平均场自由能，我们计算了液滴大小作为界面张力、弗洛里参数和凝胶弹性模量的函数。我们的结果说明了弹性相互作用在决定经历液 - 液相分离的生物聚合物的相行为中的作用。
